For many applications, such as remote sensing, surveillance, three-dimensional (3D) scanning/imaging, industrial inspection, metrology, medical imaging, biometrics authentication, object tracking, virtual reality and augmented reality, it may be desirable to have a compact, high resolution, portable, and fast tracker to accurately measure, in real time, the movement and location of an object. Such an imager should consume low power and be insensitive to vibration.
Devices using a rotating color wheel are generally sensitive to vibration. Other systems employ scanning polarizers and suffer from motion blur. Other systems utilize a microlens array and coded apertures. Such complex systems reduce the amount of light available for image detection, and therefore reduce the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The final image resolution can also be reduced considerably. Thus, the measurement of additional information using this apparatus, such as light direction of the light field, is made at the expense of reduced SNR and image resolution. Complex systems also have increased computational burden for image processing.